Forest management needed as fires affect everyone
Wildfire season in California is something that normally affected residents of the West Coast. But as hazy skies over Boston this summer proved, increasingly severe fires out West impact more than those fleeing the flames. Smoke and ash from summer wildfires was carried by the jet stream and winds, triggering health alerts thousands of miles away, including the Northeast, the National Weather Service said.
It’s not just California’s problem anymore.
In the scramble to evacuate all of South Lake Tahoe in late August, there was a palpable fear among fleeing residents that the destructive Caldor Fire could raze one of the largest communities in the Tahoe basin. Thankfully, after firefighters mounted a massive defense, South Lake Tahoe was spared.
California desperately needs to thin more of its forestland and reduce fire risks so there are more success stories like Tahoe. Protecting communities and sacred wilderness requires expedited projects and sustained investment to remove dry, accumulated undergrowth that turns forests into tinderboxes.
The state is improving regulations to encourage more prescribed burning, a technique widely used by indigenous tribes for centuries where dry fuels such as dead trees, trunks and overgrown shrubs are deliberately burned and cleared. The U.S. Forest Service, which has long resisted the tactic, has started changing course and permitting more prescribed fires.
When coupled with intentional forest thinning in certain fireprone areas, California has a chance to meaningfully influence the behavior of wildfires and give firefighters a better chance to control their spread.
Century-old forest management practices by the Forest Service,
Cal Fire and the logging industry have led to intense standoffs in recent decades among environmentalists, scientists and fire experts.
In addition to fighting fires instead of controlling them, the Forest Service allowed logging companies to decimate California forests for much of the 20th century, with little concern about the ecological harm they were causing. This gave environmentalists all the ammunition they needed to question the motives of an agency that oversees millions of acres of California forestland.
But now is the time for the environmental left to stand down. California’s forests are in terrible shape after decades of unchecked commercial logging and aggressive fire suppression. Conditions have only gotten worse as climate change dries forests and reduces rainfall, aiding recent record-breaking megafires that threaten populated areas and wipe out entire habitats.
By weaponizing federal protections — such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act — to obstruct or outright kill various wildfire prevention projects, environmentalists imperil the very ecosystems they wish to protect.
Organizations like the John Muir Project, Conservation Congress and other allied groups have been accused by leading experts of spreading “agendadriven science” that promotes specific unsupported narratives and avoids data to back up their litigious claims.
As our expertise on forest management evolves, so too must the methods employed by these environmental organizations.
Clear-cutting forestland is no longer the go-to approach, and environmentalists need to acknowledge that forest management is being done more intentionally in the 21st century.